The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

a

fine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud of his intellectual

superiority. Both in his character of gentleman, and in his

character of scholar, he looked down with disdain on the common

people, and was so little disposed to entrust them with political

power that he thought them unfit even to enjoy personal freedom.

It is a curious circumstance that this man, the most honest,

fearless, and uncompromising republican of his time, should have

been the author of a plan for reducing a large part of the

working classes of Scotland to slavery. He bore, in truth, a

lively resemblance to those Roman Senators who, while they hated

the name of King, guarded the privileges of their order with

inflexible pride against the encroachments of the multitude, and

governed their bondmen and bondwomen by means of the stocks and

the scourge.


Amsterdam was the place where the leading emigrants, Scotch and

English, assembled. Argyle repaired thither from Friesland,

Monmouth from Brabant. It soon appeared that the fugitives had

scarcely anything in common except hatred of James and impatience

to return from banishment. The Scots were jealous of the English,

the English of the Scots. Monmouth's high pretensions were

offensive to Argyle, who, proud of ancient nobility and of a

legitimate descent from kings, was by no means inclined to do

homage to the offspring of a vagrant and ignoble love. But of all

the dissensions by which the little band of outlaws was

distracted the most serious was that which arose between Argyle

and a portion of his own followers. Some of the Scottish exiles

had, in a long course of opposition to tyranny, been excited into

a morbid state of understanding and temper, which made the most

just and necessary restraint insupportable to them. They knew

that without Argyle they could do nothing. They ought to have

known that, unless they wished to run headlong to ruin, they must

either repose full confidence in their leader, or relinquish all

thoughts of military enterprise. Experience has fully proved that

in war every operation, from the greatest to the smallest, ought

to be under the absolute direction of one mind, and that every

subordinate agent, in his degree, ought to obey implicitly,

strenuously, and with the show of cheerfulness, orders which he

disapproves, or of which the reasons are kept secret from him.

Representative assemblies, public discussions, and all the other

checks by which, in civil affairs, rulers are restrained from

abusing power, are out of place in a camp. Machiavel justly

imputed many of the disasters of Venice and Florence to the

jealousy which led those republics to interfere with every one of

their generals.337 The Dutch practice of sending to an army

deputies, without whose consent no great blow could be struck,

was almost equally pernicious. It is undoubtedly by no means

certain that a captain, who has been entrusted with dictatorial

power in the hour of peril, will quietly surrender that power in

the hour of triumph; and this is one of the many considerations

which ought to make men hesitate long before they resolve to

vindicate public liberty by the sword. But, if they determine to

try the chance of war, they will, if they are wise, entrust to

their chief that plenary authority without which war cannot be

well conducted. It is possible that, if they give him that

authority, he may turn out a Cromwell or a Napoleon. But it is

almost certain that, if they withhold from him that authority,

their enterprises will end like the enterprise of Argyle.


Some of the Scottish emigrants, heated with republican

enthusiasm, and utterly destitute of the skill necessary to the

conduct of great affairs, employed all their industry and

ingenuity, not in collecting means for the attack which they were

about to make on a formidable enemy, but in devising restraints

on their leader's power and securities against his ambition. The

selfcomplacent stupidity with which they insisted on Organising

an army as if they had been organising a commonwealth would be

incredible if it had not been frankly and even boastfully

recorded by one of themselves.338


At length all differences were compromised. It was determined

that an attempt should be forthwith made on the western coast of

Scotland, and that it should be promptly followed by a descent on

England.


Argyle was to hold the nominal command in Scotland: but be was

placed under the control of a Committee which reserved to itself

all the most important parts of the military administration. This

committee was empowered to determine where the expedition should

land, to appoint officers, to superintend the levying of troops,

to dole out provisions and ammunition. All that was left to the

general was to direct the evolutions of the army in the field,

and he was forced to promise that even in the field, except in

the case of a surprise, he would do nothing without the assent of

a council of war.


Monmouth was to command in England. His soft mind had as usual,

taken an impress from the society which surrounded him. Ambitious

hopes, which had seemed to be extinguished, revived in his bosom.

He remembered the affection with which he had been constantly

greeted by the common people in town and country, and expected

that they would now rise by hundreds of thousands to welcome him.

He remembered the good will which the soldiers had always borne

him, and flattered himself that they would come over to him by

regiments. Encouraging messages reached him in quick succession

from London. He was assured that the violence and injustice with

which the elections had been carried on had driven the nation

mad, that the prudence of the leading Whigs had with difficulty

prevented a sanguinary outbreak on the day of the coronation, and

that all the great Lords who had supported the Exclusion Bill

were impatient to rally round him. Wildman, who loved to talk

treason in parables, sent to say that the Earl of Richmond, just

two hundred years before, had landed in England with a handful of

men, and had a few days later been crowned, on the field of

Bosworth, with the diadem taken from the head of Richard. Danvers

undertook to raise the City. The Duke was deceived into the

belief that, as soon as he set up his standard, Bedfordshire,

Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Cheshire would rise in arms.339 He

consequently became eager for the enterprise from which a few

weeks before he had shrunk. His countrymen did not impose on him

restrictions so elaborately absurd as those which the Scotch

emigrants had devised. All that was required of him was to

promise that he would not assume the regal title till his

pretensions has been submitted to the judgment of a free

Parliament.


It was determined that two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold,

should accompany Argyle to Scotland, and that Fletcher should go

with Monmouth to England. Fletcher, from the beginning, had

augured ill of the enterprise: but his chivalrous spirit would

not suffer him to decline a risk which his friends seemed eager

to encounter. When Grey repeated with approbation what Wildman

had said about Richmond and Richard, the well read and thoughtful

Scot justly remarked that there was a great difference between

the fifteenth century and the seventeenth. Richmond was assured

of the support of barons, each of whom could bring an army of

feudal retainers into the field; and Richard had not one regiment

of regular soldiers.340


The exiles were able to raise, partly from their own resources

and partly from the contributions of well wishers in Holland, a

sum sufficient for the two expeditions. Very little was obtained

from London. Six thousand pounds had been expected thence. But

instead of the money came excuses from Wildman, which ought to

have opened the eyes of all who were not wilfully blind. The Duke

made up the deficiency by pawning his own jewels and those of

Lady Wentworth. Arms, ammunition, and provisions were bought, and

several ships which lay at Amsterdam were freighted.341


It is remarkable that the most illustrious and the most grossly

injured man among the British exiles stood far aloof from these

rash counsels. John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a

philosopher; but his intellect and his temper preserved him from

the violence of a partisan. He had lived on confidential terms

with Shaftesbury, and had thus incurred the displeasure of the

court. Locke's prudence had, however, been such that it would

have been to little purpose to bring him even before the corrupt

and partial tribunals of that age. In one point, however, he was

vulnerable. He was a student of Christ Church in the University

of Oxford. It was determined to drive from that celebrated

college the greatest man of whom it could ever boast. But this

was not easy. Locke had, at Oxford, abstained from expressing any

opinion on the politics of the day. Spies had been set about him.

Doctors of Divinity and Masters of Arts had not been ashamed to

perform the vilest of all offices, that of watching the lips of a

companion in order to report his words to his ruin. The

conversation in the hall had been purposely turned to irritating

topics, to the Exclusion Bill, and to the character of the Earl

of Shaftesbury, but in vain. Locke neither broke out nor

dissembled, but maintained such steady silence and composure as

forced the tools of power to own with vexation that never man was

so complete a master of his tongue and of his passions. When it

was found that treachery could do nothing, arbitrary power was

used. After vainly trying to inveigle Locke into a fault, the

government resolved to punish him without one. Orders came from

Whitehall that he should be ejected; and those orders the Dean

and Canons made haste to obey.


Locke was travelling on the Continent for his health when he

learned that he had been deprived of his home and of his bread

without a trial or even a notice. The injustice with which he had

been treated would have excused him if he had resorted to violent

methods of redress. But he was not to be blinded by personal

resentment he augured no good from the schemes of those who had

assembled at Amsterdam; and he quietly repaired to Utrecht,

where, while his partners in misfortune were planning their own

destruction, he employed himself in writing his celebrated letter

on Toleration.342


The English government was early apprised that something was in

agitation among the outlaws. An invasion of England seems not to

have been at first expected; but it was apprehended that Argyle

would shortly appear in arms among his clansmen. A proclamation

was accordingly issued directing that Scotland should be put into

a state of defence. The militia was ordered